PLDS gets smart on ODD functionality

Jun 6, 2008

Computex, Taiwan – The world's second-largest optical disc (ODD) manufacturer, Philips & Lite-on Digital Solutions (PLDS) announced a slew of new products at this year's Computex, including a solution for the more secure destruction of unwanted discs.

With the ODD market expected to reach more than 300-million units this year, Vincent Chang, director of PLDS's channel marketing and sales division, ODD, says the company will roll out a number of new hardware products from August onward.In terms of drives, Chang introduced four new drives – the iHES 106 and the iHAP 322, BD combos that will be USB powered; as well as the eSAU 108, a slim DVD-writer and a 22X DVD drive in the iHAP622."All the products that we are introducing are aimed specifically at our channel business and they will be launched continually from Augus," Chang says.While PLDS's more than 600 dedicated engineers will continue to bring leading edge hardware to the market, it is on the software side that Chang says the company is looking to give users more value-add.One such product is SmartErase, which users can implement to safely and securely destroy old or unwanted discs."What's so special about this product?" Chang asks. "People from time to time try to destroy or erase data which they have recorded on normal CD media – and they usually do this by cutting or by bending discs."But this is not smart and often a lot of information or evidence is still left on these discs."With SmartErase, users are able to erase data recorded on media and make it impossible to read back," Chang says. "It leaves absolutely no evidence on the media that could possibly be used to compromise the user."Chang says that PLDS will bring additional functionality to its products on an ongoing basis."We are looking to include a lot of this type of value-add functionality to our products and, in addition to SmartErase, we will be introducing another function – SmartSecure – later this year," he says.